Metamaterials are artificial materials that have been engineered to have particular material properties, including material properties that are not found in nature. The typical metamaterial has a periodic structure that is selected to affect sound, electromagnetic radiation, heat transport, and/or electricity in a particular way. An exemplary metamaterial is negative refractive index material, which is a material that exhibits a negative refractive index in response to electromagnetic radiation of a particular frequency.
The structure of some metamaterials is periodic on a nanometer or sub-nanometer scale. Forming these types of metamaterials using known methods is both time consuming and expensive.
Accordingly, there is a continuing need in the art to develop methods and systems for forming periodically structured metamaterials reliably and less expensively.